By Mitch Phillips
ZHANGJIAKOU, China (Reuters) – The inaugural Olympic ski jumping mixed team competition got underway on Monday as China’s Dong Bing had the honour of being the first woman to jump in the event and second-off Canadian teenager Alexandria Loutitt was hoping for redemption.
Two men and two women from 10 countries will jump from the normal hill, with the best eight from the preliminary round advancing to the final later on Monday.
Although ski jumping has been part of the Olympic programme since the Games began in 1924, women joined the party only in 2014, but with only a normal hill competition while the men have normal, large and team medals to go for.
The mixed team event has been a world championship regular since 2013, with Germany winning the last four editions. They, Austria, Japan and Norway have won all 15 available medals between them.
Slovenia finished fourth in the last three world championships but won the most recent World Cup event last month and look ready to break that four-nation stranglehold.
The east European country will be frustrated, however, that there is no women’s team competition having placed first, third, fifth and ninth in the individual event on Saturday.
Second down the ramp was Loutitt, who is hoping for a better outcome than in the individual event where she was disqualified after her first attempt for a breach of the “ski length to weight ratio” rule.
That was introduced by the sport’s governing body in response to growing concerns that the pressure to be as light as possible was leading to eating disorders. Now, if an athlete has a body mass index below 20, they have to shorten their skis by a set measurement to counter the distance benefit gained by being lighter.
Norway’s 2018 Olympic champion Maren Lundby opted not to defend her title after announcing last year that she had put on weight and was not prepared to endanger her health by trying to force it down to the necessary level to compete.
“I was too light, my scale at home was off and I was 300 grammes under,” Loutitt told Reuters after her jump on Monday.
“It was pretty unfortunate. I had a top-20 jump and got disqualified almost immediately. I was crying in equipment control when they told me.”
Typically for the cash-strapped Canadian team, Loutitt was forced to borrow a pair of skis from a team mate to be able to compete on Monday.
“I’m super-excited to be part of this team tonight,” she said. “We’ve gone through a lot together, we’ve watched our jumps fall apart (in Canada) and it’s pretty heartbreaking but the fact that we can be together here as a team is pretty awesome.”
(Reporting by Mitch Phillips, editing by Ed Osmond)
